Dave Strider
Dave Strider is one of the main characters in Homestuck, and the third kid to be introduced. He is obsessed with being cool, which manifests itself in his unceasing pursuit of new ironic depths. When the original name "Insufferable Prick" was about to be suggested, he slashed the entry box right in half with a Ninja Sword because he's just way too cool to put up with that kind of bullshit. On Pesterchum his Chumhandle is . He has Pesterchum Version 7.0 as opposed to John's 6.0. His web browser of choice is Hephaestus. His Associated Classical Element is Fire, as indicated by his web browser and the weather outside his house, and his Associated Item is Amber. Biography Childhood Dave was raised by his Bro who was ectobiologically his father. It was suggested in the author commentary of Homestuck book three that Dave was physically and emotionally abused by him, with evidence such as in Act 3 where he was starved by his Bro among other things. Eventually he exposits about this during Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, confirming these suspicions. At some point (most likely due to Jade's prophetic influence) he befriended John, Rose, and Jade through the internet, and often talks with them on Pesterchum. Pre-Entry Though he did have the game, Dave has no interest in Sburb and thinks it was a total piece of shit, going so far as to and further antagonize John for wanting to play the game. However, this may just have been him making excuses so that he wouldn't have to admit he lost his Sburb beta discs in an incident involving a crow and a certain worthless piece of shit sword. Nevertheless, Rose's pestering eventually wears him down, and he goes to retrieve Bro's copy of Sburb. The two have a duel on the roof of their apartment for no apparent reason beyond the awesomeness of it, and Bro's puppet, Lil Cal, is destroyed in the aftermath. Bro defeats Dave but lets him have the discs anyway before flying away on his rocket board. He is then able to connect to Rose, who was by that point in extreme peril by the fires threatening her home. Shortly after Rose enters the Medium, Jade connects to him as his server. Jade prototypes Dave's sprite with the Rambunctious Crow he accidentally slew with a Sylladex mix-up. The two also investigate the functions of some Sburb equipment. He makes his entry item, an eggy-loking thign [sic], which is taken by his kernelsprite to a nest it had built out of shitty swords and soft puppet ass. When Dave attempts to reach the nest to break the artifact he is repulsed by the crowsprite, causing the meteor to come dangerously close to his apartment before it is sliced in two by Bro. It turns out that the artifact only needed time in order for it to hatch, sending Dave to the Medium. Entry In a doomed timeline which began shortly afterwards, Dave prototyped the sprite with Lil Cal after entering. However, since this new sprite was a useless guide and annoying as fuck (also because John and Jade were dead) this Dave goes back in time and prototypes the sprite with himself, becoming Davesprite. Because of Davesprite, Dave gets a lot of high-level gear early on. After this, Dave is able to trick John into giving him the code for Rose's journals (as John crashed briefly in her house). Soon after getting the genetic code , Dream Rose awakens Dream Dave's consciousness on Derse, forcing the waking Dave asleep. The two of them have a dance party. While he was asleep, Jade built up his house. Upon waking Dave does lots of alchemization, including a copy of Rose's journals promptly lost when a Dersite agent stole them along with the copies of Sburb he used as a bookmark. He considers preventing this with time travel but notices that one such Dave had tried that and died, so Alpha Dave decides against it. He soon enters his first Gate, transporting elsewhere on his planet, the Land of Heat and Clockwork. He begins exploiting his time travel gear to the full, allowing him to establish time loops to bring about the events of his present and the time point's future. The loops must be stable and internally consistent, otherwise offshoot timelines ensue that can only be fixed with dead alternate Daves. He also talks extensively with Terezi Pyrope, forming a close bond through shitty cartooning. Initially he is hesitant to trust her but is reassured by his future self giving him a thumbs up. from Hephaestus' forge.]] Later, Dave obtains the Broken Caledfwlch. He falls asleep and observes the Furthest Ring for the first time, and talks to Dream Rose about her plan to destroy the Green Sun. He is seen manipulating the LOHACSE, and at some point a version of him splits off to become Coinflip Dave. Dave claims to have performed enough time travel to have experienced three days' total playing Sburb, whereas the game itself linearly took just one day by the end. His shenanigans on the LOHAC stock exchange give him enough boonbucks to donate to a past Terezi who made her interested on the humans in first place. He gives the past version of himself the thumbs-up to trust her and then starts his own time adventures. He eventually finds Bro's corpse on LOWAS, but decides he wasn't too upset over his death. Shortly after John's ascension, he travels to his own Quest Bed on Terezi's instruction to kill an alternate-timeline self. There, he struggles to come to terms with the notion and abandons it, despite the fact that this Dave would inevitably die anyway. He then travels to the Land of Frost and Frogs, having witnessed in different points of his own timeline Jade's space-warping fight with a Uranium Imp. He contacts Jade and has her deploy an Intellibeam Laserstation in his house to allow him to duplicate his server disc to effectively become Jade's new server player in lieu of John, unable to continue the role. He deploys a heavily upgraded alchemiter to replace the equipment broken in Jade's entry to The Medium. Near the end of the timeline, he helps Jade collect frogs for breeding, speeding up the process through time travel. The two are attacked by Jack Noir and Dave is killed in the confront. Dave wakes up as his dream self and assists Rose on Derse in planning the destruction of the Green Sun. According to Karkat, Dave does not travel through time any further from this point until the scratch occurs where the trolls' feed cuts. The Tumor is delivered to Derse's moon by Liv Tyler. Rose tricks Dave into staying on Derse to carry out the mission alone putting him to sleep, where he talked to her via a dream bubble. The Draconian Dignitary appears and stab him, prompting Dave to wake, fly off to the moon and dispatch him. As Rose and Dave fly to where the Green Sun should have been they find their Quest Beds inside the moon's core and stand on them as they set up The Tumor, which physically contained both the kids' and trolls' universes. As both universes end the Tumor explodes, creating the Green Sun instead of destroying it. Dave and Rose rise out of the sun ascended to god tier in the process. The three-year journey Dave travels with Rose, the surviving trolls, and the Wayward Vagabond on the trolls' meteor in a three-year trip to the Alpha session. During his time on the trip he dates Terezi for a while, but breaks up when he finds about her kismesitude with Gamzee. In Openbound Dave makes some , quoting numerous things he's said in earlier Pesterlogs. He later witnesses Rose get drunk in preparation for her date, much to his embarrassment. As the meteor reaches the new session, a mind-controlled Jade intercepts it and Dave ends in his planet with WV somehow. As he examines his old room he talks to himself out loud, commenting on old interests and memories. John briefly appears behind him, catching him off guard, and the two have a brief discussion where John reveals he knows what's going on, but has to leave before he can say anything else. Jade appears and convinces him upgrading his sword to be able to harm . This only his sword back to Caledfwlch to his annoyance. They have a conversation about Dave not wanting to use time travel and Jade's relationship with Davesprite which ends in Jade pushing WV off of Dave's roof. Dave catches him and begins comforting him. These events are temporarily altered when John appears in the middle of them with the powers he got from Caliborn's juju. They talk about John's new abilities to change the alpha timeline and how they relate to time travel, with the conversation about Davesprite and WV being pushed off the cliff both averted. However this is restored when John's future self flashes back through time and takes John away before Dave notices him. Dave later receives a message from Karkat to come into LOFAF, arriving in time to see Jade crushed under her house. Jack and PM appear, carrying Jade to her quest bed, and Dave runs after them to retrieve her corpse so Jane can revive her. Ultimately Dave fails and is killed by both Jack and PM, resulting in a Heroic death. New Timeline In the new timeline created by John's retcons Dave traveled on the trolls' meteor as well, but Vriska survived to the trip. Here he has developed a much better relationship with Karkat, most likely due to them not having conflict with Terezi (who seems to spend most of her time on the meteor with Vriska). They were known to be in some sort of relationship as implied by Rachel Whatpumpkin, and later in . Dave is seen with everyone else on the victory platform and after John and Roxy arrive he talks with most people there. When Vriska lets everyone choose who will fight which villain he and Terezi choose B2 Jack Noir, hoping it relates to his prophecy of being the one who defeats so he can put said prophecy to rest. Soon after Dirk is to the victory platform, causing Dave and Dirk to finally meet. The Striders go to LOTAK, and do not talk to each other until meeting Jasprosesprite^2; they have a brief awkward conversation, later having a much longer conversation about their respective upbringings. Not long after Terezi's arrival, both B2 Jack and Cyborg Spades Slick arrive. Dave, Dirk, and Terezi fight both Jacks to a near standstill, and they're left nearly defeated until Dirk is grasped in a chokehold by B2 Jack, and Spades Slick grabs hold of the latter. At Dirk's prompting, Dave uses the opportunity to behead both Jacks and Dirk in the process. Dave collects Dirk's head and body via time travel, then grabs Terezi, pulling them to safety as B2 Jack detonates. Dave reconvenes with everyone else on the victory platform to revive Dirk and claim the Ultimate Reward. In Earth C, Dave publishes a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff book and he, Jade, Terezi, and Karkat appear to live together in the Troll Kingdom. Caliborn's Masterpiece Years in the future but not many he and the Beta kids confront Caliborn but are sucked into the House-shaped Juju, supposedly trapped forever. It is implied that they are released when Vriska unleashes the Juju at during the events of Act 7. Alternate Daves These Daves were from alternate timelines which they went back to prevent, intentionally or not. Davesprite/Alternate future Dave This alternate Dave originated in a timeline where John was not stopped from going through his seventh gate and meeting Typheus, as a result John died and Jade failed to enter. This Dave prototyped Lil Cal as his tier 2 prototyping, creating Calsprite. After four months in this timeline investigating the game with an alternate Rose he traveled back in time to prevent John's premature entry of his seventh gate, and then prevented the creation of Calsprite by prototyping himself and thus becoming Davesprite. Journal Dave This Dave was the product of his attempt to travel back in time and stop the Draconian Dignitary from stealing his copies of Rose's journals. He was killed in his attempt, and upon seeing this Dave's corpse, Alpha Dave decided the Dignitary was too powerful to stop, thus avoiding making the events of his death the alpha timeline. His body is thrown out of the window into the lava of LOHAC to avoid freaking out Jade, but this didn't stop Dave himself briefly freaking out over having to dispose of his own corpse. After his death he met up with other ghosts in the dream bubbles and was destroyed along with them when Dave iShades.gif Dave and Davesprite.gif Derse's moon through furthest ring.gif Dave finds Bro's corpse.gif|Dave finding [[Dirk Strider (pre-scratch)|Bro's corpse. Dave sleeping.gif|Dave without glasses. SBAHJ Dave.jpg| Trivia *Dave actually has a canon trickster mode form, but was only shown in the credits. *Dave was named by Doomish. *His Hash Map Modus was chosen by TheGentleman. *His reluctance to remove his shades may be due in part to this abnormal - almost mutant - candy red colored eyes. *According to Tavros, Dave is stated to have }}. Combined with his eye color, this suggests Dave may be albino. He also mentions being an }} while talking to Terezi. *Dave and the author share some similarities. Notable points are Hussie's frequent use of Dave's , recurring references to Dave's , and Hussie's own admission that he finds Dave's dialogue to be the most natural one to write and that some of Dave's early dialogue was borrowed from actual chatlogs of his own. The two also ostensibly draw the same webcomic. Also, they both look insanely stylish in shades. **The first SBaHJ book was made by Dave. A picture of him is found inside the book and it could be purchased with Dave's signature on a random page. *Dave's hair is shaped like a bird, foreshadowing his prototyping of a crow and later Davesprite. **Andrew says that Dave *Dave's surname and use of broken and un-broken swords are a reference to Aragorn of the Lord of the Rings series, a character also referred to as "Strider." *His sword is also slightly reminiscent of Riven's sword from the game League of Legends. *Dave shares some similarities with the character "David" In the movie The Sandlot 2. *Sollux "Iin2ufferable Priick" early in Dave's timeline before the first seen attempt to name him "Insufferable Prick" occurs. *Dave used dream bubbles to create a Twitter account called dave_ebubbles. It can be found here as well as in Openbound. *Dave had a bib made by his Bro from Maplehoof's hide and it features a heart on it. Interestingly, the post-scratch version of his Bro happens to be the [[Dirk Strider|Prince of Heart]], and Dave's associated classical element, Fire, is usually represented by the hearts suit in card games. *Dave's is part of a panel from And It Don't Stop. *Dave is depicted on the "0: The Fool" card in the Homestuck Tarot Deck, as well as on "XXI: The World" with the other B1 kids. He can also be seen on the "Two of Wands" and "Five of Wands" (With most of the pre act 6 cast) card. *Dave also wears a record icon that looks like a red number zero on a shiny black billiard ball. This may allude to a connection between him and , making him the 0 of time, while [[Snowman|